GillianLanyon.com

Religion is by nature elitist. Everyone wants to believe that...

Fri, 25 May 2012 15:48:13 -0400

Religion is by nature elitist. Everyone wants to believe that his way is the right way. Too many people, regardless of their faith, are small-minded enough to imagine that their beliefs, their doctrines, and their rituals are the only way to be saved or to know God. I’m not self-centred enough to entertain these thoughts. In no way do I imagine that my family members are the only people who got it right.

God speaks to each of us in His own way. He calls a person in that person’s language and reaches individuals in terms they will understand. What I’m called to do is not what you are called to do. I don’t consider followers of another religion any less worthy in God’s eyes or mine. I don’t believe that what’s appropriate for one person is necessarily appropriate for all. [This religion] is my calling. It’s probably not yours - and that’s fine with me.

Can you believe that Kody Brown from Sister Wives said that? Imagine if Mitt Romney could speak so eloquently about faith. This shit is profound.

1) part of the YouTube phenomena seems to be a desire for authenticity. How do higher production values affect that? 2) These YouTubers seem to be selling well packaged banality. Am I crazy to ask what the appeal is? Is it as simple as that?

Tue, 01 May 2012 15:23:09 -0400

I have a feeling I know who this is!

As for question 1, I tried to answer it in my post on my favourite vloggers and how personal is too personal. You can find it here.

Question 2… well packaged banality. Hmmm, I think the appeal is interest-dependent. One YouTuber might not hold your interest, but I’m sure there are some out there you would enjoy. I have a fascination with people who are not at all like me, which is why my favourite vloggers are who they are. I think the appeal of daily vloggers is hard to understand until you spend an hour or two watching a big batch of videos. It’s the steady, regular, consistent stream of content from people you grow to care about that makes up for a lack of plot. This is also why I enjoy Swiss Chalet. You might need something a little less sacharine. You might be interested in someone like Jenna Marbles, who is a mean, funny bitch (and I mean that as a term of endearment.)

My Favourite Vloggers (and a reflection on how personal is too personal)

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:02:06 -0400

Well, I said I’d share a few of my favourite vloggers. I’m leaving off the ones that focus on bro humour because 1) Wired covered them off nicely and, 2) I don’t really like bro humour, even if it is the hottest commodity on YouTube.

The Shaytards

You can read my post about them here, but the long and short of it is that they are a nice, normal family that uploads a new video of their daily life each day. This makes them lifecasters.
The whole thing was spearheaded by patriarch (they are Mormons after all) Shay Carl Butler. His wife Colette also has her own channel called Katilette, which was the pseudonym she originally used. The kids are still working fake names - SonTard, PrincessTard, BabyTard, and baby Rocktard. Their baby has spent every day of his life on camera (well, I think they tape for like, twenty minutes a day so we aren’t entering Toddlers & Tiaras territory here.) An interesting thing about the fake names: they aren’t really a security measure. You can find the kids’ real names online. Every once in a while, Shay explains that he doesn’t want to read negative comments with his kids names in them. That said, the comments are overwhelmingly positive. Quite a feat for YouTube, which is usually has comments that read like a middle school bathroom wall.

Highlights:

Caseylavere

Casey is Shay’s brother. He is younger and his humour is drier. Casey and his wife Kayli, daughter Brailee and son Gage joined the Shay and his family in LA after he founded his YouTube production company/talent agency Maker Studios. He aims to upload about five lifecasting videos a week, and usually lands somewhere around two.
A true man’s man, Casey hunts and fishes, incurring the wrath of the 13-year-old girls who make up a large proportion of his audience. His wife Kayli has her own channel, HeyKayli, where she covers crafts, hair tutorials and her recent Oprah-style attempt at getting mentally and emotionally healthy after struggling with an eating disorder. She is the sweetest woman in the world. Imagine if Cindy Lou Who grew up and didn’t become Taylor Momsen, but instead became a sweet mom who loves to bake cookies and style her daughter’s hair - that’s Kayli.

Highlights:

The Mom’s View

I am not a mom, but this show doesn’t just talk mom stuff. It’s like The View would be if it were actually run by normal women instead of hideous shebeasts who are hungry for wedding freebies and cheap laughs. This is another one from Maker Studios featuring Kayli and Colette along with some other YouTube famous moms - but hey, they produce the best content. Also, this is where Colette and Kayli talk about their marriages most openly. (Fun fact: Kayli has always believed that she loves Casey more!)
Earlier this year Maker launched a mom vertical and this intimate talkshow (taped on Kayli’s couch but still high production quality and multi camera) is the result. They are starting to book higher profile guests and their audience seems to be growing.
Even though I have a sweet cable package, this show is the closest I’ve found in terms of filling the void that Oprah left behind. Sample wisdom: You aren’t raising children - you’re raising adults. BAM.

Highlights:

Shay and Casey guest star and talk fatherhood (and Shay admits that if his house caught on fire and he could only save one person, he’d save his wife - and his kids know it)
When is the right time to have kids?

My Housewife Life

Finally - one that isn’t from Maker Studios, but from a lovely homemaker (that’s a compliment) named Jen who lives with her husband Donald in Chicago. I discovered her when planning a recent trip to Disney World (you can read a little about why exactly I love Disney World so much here) and found some vlogs she made of her trip.
Jen is pure escapism. She is what I imagine I would be like if I stayed home - a Type A Missus who treats homemaking as a serious profession. She has an office where she films Birchbox openings and haul videos (which are all the more credible because she can afford to buy what she wants so she isn’t swayed by sponsorships) and wraps gifts. The wrapping paper behind her changes to reflect the season and upcoming holidays. Jenn also has a channel called OrganizedLikeJen where she shows people how to organize like a pro. These videos have changed the way I approach storage.
Jen is endearingly sweet and open about her struggle with social anxiety. She lunches with her mother at Neiman Marcus and gets excited by $5 eyeshadow. She shares my love of J. Crew and we have the same birthday. In the short time I’ve been watching her videos, her popularity seems to have grown. If I were Maker Studios, I’d be falling over myself to convince her to sign.
WARNING: Jen’s husband is a sweet nerd (again, a compliment) who lives to make her happy. If your own relationship is in a bad place, avoid her slice-of-life vlogs at all costs.

Highlights:

OrganizedLikeJen magazine storage
Jen’s Ulta haul
Jen’s birthday vlog and birthday haul (her husband Don brought her presents/cake in bed and then they went shopping!)
Disney vlog (skip to 16:46 to see her husband surprise her with an in-room Princess celebration)

PhamDamily

This is another family (Mom Jinger, Dad Phil, and their three kids) that produces almost-daily slice-of-life vlogs. Their appeal is similar to that of the Shaytards (in fact, Jinger is Colette’s best friend from childhood.) They recently had the unfortunate experience of announcing their miracle pregnancy (Phil had recently had a vasectomy) and then having a miscarriage in realtime. Not only did it made for riveting viewing and make me a more compassionate person (nobody close to me has gone through something like this, and seeing it up close really breaks your heart), but it raised a challenging question around lifecasting.
Building up a base of loyal viewers through vlogging means sharing intimate details and never letting anyone think you’re hiding anything. What do you lose when you give up your privacy? When your vlogs are daily or almost-daily, it’s almost impossible to keep important news to yourself without betraying the trust of an audience who believes they are seeing an accurate depiction of someone’s life, warts and all. Does this make going through a tragedy more difficult? I’d say - judging from the outpouring of love and support during this family’s miscarriage (and a similar outpouring I witnessed when fellow lifecaster CharlesTrippy discovered a brain tumour and told his audience about it the same day) - no.
The audience a lifecaster builds isn’t looking to see them fail. They are “along for the ride.” They are also behind a screen. When something terrible happens, lifecasters aren’t facing the equivalent of being bombarded with the uncomfortable (but appreciated) IRL sympathy that can come from acquaintances. They receive thousands of tweets, wall posts and messages from people who are rooting for their happiness and success.

Highlights:

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Leave me an Ask Me Anything message (or contact me on Twitter @gillianlanyon) if you have any fave vloggers of your own to share.

Celebrity 2.0 and YouTube’s New Studio System (gillianlanyon.com)

This is not a question, but a comment. I am also fascinated with Mormons and Mormonism. I don't know why, but I always have been. I actually never thought that I would ever find another person who was as interested as I am. I dream about going into the Temple, although I would never be able to, as I am Jewish.

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:51:43 -0400

Thanks for sharing this. I think there are quite a few of us that are fascinated. I’m sure you probably know this, but before new temples are dedicated, they are open to the public for open houses. Maybe that’s one way of fulfilling the dream.

Celebrity 2.0 and YouTube’s New Studio System

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:41:16 -0400

I don’t know if Celebrity 2.0 has been thrown around at a bunch of new media conferences. It’s sounds a little douchey, so it’s possible. But I was thinking about the concept earlier today when I discovered (like millions of other people) a YouTuber who hit it big with a song he covered, performed it on Ellen, landed a gig producing for Timbaland and then quit to sign with a YouTube production company I was already familiar with called Maker Studios.

Not too long ago, I read about how young people were using YouTube as a search engine and how they would rather watch online video than read content online - even when learning something new. At the time, I couldn’t relate to wanting to absorb information via video when I could just read it. Reading allows for skimming. And internet personalities seemed to flame out when the recession took hold. Remember Julia Allison? I imagine she is being quarantined somewhere for consumption or that cough Nicole Kidman had in Moulin Rouge. Indeed, lifecasting and Youtube celebrities seemed ridiculous. But then my sister Hilary (you should really follow her on Twitter) introduced me to the Shaytards.

A lot of the talk around the Youtube Partner Project focused on brands and celebrities, but the real stars of Youtube are people like LisaNova, KassemG and the Shaytards. You can read in Wired about how they’ve created their own studio system. While the focus of this article is comedy, the Youtubers with the largest and most loyal followings are lifecasters. What’s interesting is that the biggest audience for a lot of these lifecasters is teenagers – especially teenage girls. The most successful lifecasters on Youtube are the Shaytards. For those who know me - I know I talk about the Shaytards a lot (because they and people like them are the future of entertainment), but here’s a summary:

It started when an Idahoan granite countertop installer and part-time radio DJ Shay Carl Butler decided to vlog every day of his 29th year – shooting, editing and uploading a new video every day of his life and his family.
The name actually comes from a video where Shay danced in his wife’s unitard – not offensive!
He quickly built a dedicated following (almost 1 million subscribers), the vlogs are into year 4 now and get around 160,000–200,000 views each – big events (like their Christmas vlogs and milestones can get over a million views each.
The family went from being broke in Idaho to swimming in Youtube cash (content creators cash in on advertising once they hit a certain number of views) and living in LA when Shay became a founding partner in Maker Studios, which seems to be a smashing success and has opened a second office/studio space in NYC.
To give some context – Playlist Live, an annual Youtuber gathering/conference, had Youtube as its primary sponsor in the past. This year Youtube was a secondary sponsor – because Maker is the primary sponsor. How does Maker make all this money? Maker provides a carefully selected stable of Youtubers with access to a studio, editing, a recording studio, royalty-free music, directors, a dedicated ad sales team, etc in exchange for a cut of their ad revenues. Unlike other networks (except Revision3), Maker makes all stats and earnings data available to content creators.
Maker has started creating sponsored ad content using their artists’ own channels. Here is something Shaycarl did for T Mobile. Nothing too special (in fact, it’s a pretty brutal Toyota Swagger Wagon ripoff) but this really is the ultimate influencer grab. The artist excitedly tell his or her audience about the opportunity, gives the behind-the-scenes in their regular vlogs and then launches the video on their channel. The audience appreciates that the brand is supporting one of their favourite vloggers – someone they consider a friend.
Recently they put together a deal with Weight Watchers – Shay and his brother (his whole family pretty much started their own channels, moved out to LA, and became part of Maker’s different verticals) shot an interview with Charles Barkely that aired on his channel. And no wonder brands are going directly to content creators – they can guarantee views.
If you only watch one Shaytards video, make it this one. It’s the one Google trots out at press conferences when they want to prove that Youtube content can have greater depth and isn’t all AFV-style videos. The baby born in it has been on camera every day of his life so far. Just meditate on that for a minute.

Annnnyway, I am addicted to watching this family. And it’s not like they do anything fascinating. They are just a nice, normal (Mormon!) family. Anderson Cooper had them on his show a month(ish) ago and accused them of doing nothing more than uploading home videos. This made me think for the first time that Cooper is an Old, because the appeal of these videos isn’t that they are a complete product - it is that they are part of an ongoing project that will seemingly NEVER END. The vlog goes up every day without fail. It’s like 49 Up times a million. In real life, I recoil in terror at small children but from the safety of my couch, I have watched the four Tard kids mature and go back and forth between being shy and outgoing and exemplify the connection between personality and birth order. It’s fucking fascinating.

Overall, my media consumption habits have changed drastically in the last 3-6 months. I have considered getting rid of cable, and not because I can download the cable shows I want to watch.* Most of the shows I PVR have gone unwatched. Now when I get home and turn on the TV, it’s to watch YouTube videos from my subscribed channels. The content is more interesting than what’s on TV, and I actually care what happens to the people I watch.

I really believe we are in the last stretch of time when an amateur can make it on YouTube. Because of Maker and studios like it (not to mention celebrities who have realized YouTube can be a cash cow), production values have steadily crept up and newer users with full-time jobs and the copy of Windows Movie Maker that came bundled with their Dell laptop have trouble breaking through. If you are at all charismatic and have ever thought about vlogging, NOW IS THE TIME.

I’ll be putting together a list of my favourite vloggers soon. I’d love to hear who yours are.

*My love of reality TV and the great joy I get from livetweeting it will prevent me from ever getting rid of cable. So I pretty much am paying over $100 a month to have strangers favourite my cutting remarks about My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and the Miss USA pageant. I am mildly disgusted by this, but also not really because I count this as “writing”

via http://timehop.com/m/KdQO

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:17:07 -0400

via http://timehop.com/m/KdQO

Louis is in the office. Next to my chair. In a bigger, nicer...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:09:43 -0400

Louis is in the office. Next to my chair. In a bigger, nicer chair. (Taken with instagram)

37 days! Now it’s real. (Taken with instagram)

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:41:56 -0400

37 days! Now it’s real. (Taken with instagram)

I done been Gawked

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:44:56 -0500

Getting quoted in a publication I’ve loved for so long, by a writer I respect so much, about two topics I’m so interested in has been a thrill. I’m working on a more in-depth post about why I find Mormons so fascinating, but you can read a teensy bit about it here. Also, you can find the Pinterest board referenced in the article here. And while I’m tooting my own horn, you should follow me on Twitter here.

"For years I have been trying to figure out what makes a good ad person better than an average ad..."

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:49:00 -0500

“For years I have been trying to figure out what makes a good ad person better than an average ad person. There are some people who are just better at it than others. They seem to have an intuitive understanding of what’s going to work and what’s not going to work. They are not deluded by marketing cliches or expert opinions. They draw their conclusions from a kind of personal understanding rather than conventional wisdom. I’ve spent a lot of hours trying to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes them exceptional. My previous theories about this have been too intellectual. I have hypothesized that they have a deeper psychological understanding of human motivation. But I’ve never really been happy with this explanation. It seems very much like a tautology. Then the other night, slithering on hands and knees from the bed to the bathroom, it struck me. There’s a much simpler and more satisfying explanation. The attribute that makes people exceptional at advertising is that they’re better at noticing things. They’re good noticers.”

- The Ad Contrarian: What Makes An Ad Person Exceptional?

This is a pretty solid post, inspired by food poisoning, about how being a good noticer (as opposed to a good listener). And if reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking has taught me anything, it’s that introverts usually make the best noticers. The book is awesome. Expect it to show up here again.

Lookie what I made! I am teaching myself photoshop and love this...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:55:05 -0500

Lookie what I made! I am teaching myself photoshop and love this Karl Lagerfeld quote. The man, along with Ice T, is an oracle. Except for when he’s calling Adele fat. Then he’s just a jerk.

Richard Lawson is a genius.

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:27:53 -0500

This is probably the best thing I’ve read all week. Richard Lawson (who moved from Gawker over to The Atlantic Wire recently) just killed it with his Dickensian take on Romney. If this were a full length novel, I would buy it.

100 Tips About Life, People, and Happiness

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:19:00 -0500

100 Tips About Life, People, and Happiness:

This list of 100 things that will make your life better by Julien Smith is awesome. Some personal faves:

Spend more time around people that both challenge and respect you.
Remain skeptical forever.
Read more. Especially things you disagree with.
Get used to feeling stupid. It’s a sign of growth.
Starve if you have to, for as long as you need to.
Survive on a little just to prove you can do it.
Get one big success at an early age. It’ll help build your confidence for bigger things.
Nobody likes a know-it-all. [Fun fact: I actually used to keep an image of Martin Prince as my desktop background to remind me of this when I was young and overly ambitious, and was constantly trying to prove I was smart. I needed a visual reminder that nobody likes a know-it-all so I wouldn’t annoy people. If you’re smart, people will know it without you having to tell them. No need to put the “I’m a genius” messaging on blast.]
Be humble and curious.
Twitter followers don’t keep you warm at night.
Make your home a place where you feel safe.
As soon as you can, buy some art.
Dress like a cooler version of yourself.

There’s also a bunch of stuff about helping people and being a good person. I highly recommend it. Check out the rest here.

The peculiarities of the British have never been more urgent to...

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 11:19:39 -0500

The peculiarities of the British have never been more urgent to understand: this picture reveals national traits that have become very relevant as the euro crisis unfolds. The euro may or may not survive but the fact is that we didn’t join it. What kept Britain out? Was it the Tory Eurosceptics, Gordon Brown – or a spiritual insularity that is far older and more innate? This image says it all. We never were going to abandon sterling for two reasons that precede all others. We stayed out because we have a monarchy, and because we once had an empire. (via Prince Charles and Camilla: the timeless imperial grandees | Jonathan Jones | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk)

College students love their phones.

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:19:10 -0500

College students love their phones.

"The postwar plenitude of the 1950s was marked by a new form of middle-class striving we called..."

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:57:50 -0500

“The postwar plenitude of the 1950s was marked by a new form of middle-class striving we called “keeping up with the Joneses,” and it involved making sure your car was newer, lawn greener, and kitchen bigger than your neighbours’. But as the anti-consumerist values of the counterculture become absorbed into the mainstream, conspicuous rebellion — a.k.a. cool — became the dominant status hierarchy in urban North America for the next 40 years. But cool died out a decade or so ago, when the fraudulent nature of its political posturing was exposed by the seamless transition of hippies into yuppies and the failure of the anti-globalization movement to advance any agenda beyond “let’s break stuff.” Into this cultural vacuum stepped the authenticity-seekers, who simply doubled down on the political aspirations of the counterculture. Where cool was about non-conformity and the rejection of mass society, authenticity set itself up as a root-and-branch rejection of the social, economic, and political infrastructure of the modern world. But it is not hard to see how everything that might serve as a source of authenticity could be put to work in a status competition. When it comes to shopping locally, how local is local enough? If we want to live a low-impact, environmentally conscious lifestyle, how far do we need to go? Living an authentic life turns out to be a positional good that gets its value from the force of what Veblen called an “invidious” comparison — i.e. designed to create resentment. You can only be authentic as long as most of the people around you are not, which has its own built-in radicalizing dynamic. You start out getting an organic-vegetable delivery service once a month, and the next thing you know everyone is growing chickens in their attics, bragging about their trips to Bhutan and helicopter-parenting their 100-mile children. The upshot is that something that started out as a relatively innocent attempt at doing things that are not only pleasurable but also good for society and good for the planet has been revealed as nothing more than a consumer-driven hoax. On the one hand, those of us who are status-conscious can relax, knowing that we have one less thing to be anxious about. But if our culture’s past is any guide to its future, something else will come along soon enough. In fact, it probably already has.”

- The authenticity hoax is dead

Andrew Potter’s The Authenticity Hoax is staggering in its insight into how and why different cultural movements drive consumption. It was probably the best nonfiction book I read last year.

Potter is a realtalk machine. There is nothing more authentic than declaring authenticity dead because it’s the truth and cannibalizing your own book sales/career in the short term (no more speeches about authenticity!)

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

The Restaurant of Broken Dreams

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 11:15:54 -0500

The Restaurant of Broken Dreams:

This twitter stream of the Boston Globe’s Andy Boyle chronicling the breakdown of a marriage at Burger King is the best thing I’ve read in WEEKS.

Also, Storify looks like an awesome platform (seriously) for summarizing social media conversations. The layout is gorgeous and I’m sure it will save bloggers a lot of time screengrabbing.

(via Northern Planner: Change) Deck candy!

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 09:41:00 -0500

(via Northern Planner: Change)

Deck candy!

"In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used..."

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:21:02 -0500

“In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ” Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.””

- Steve Jobs’s Real Genius : The New Yorker

The further I get into the Steve Jobs bio, the more I love Bill Gates.

"Nowhere is clients’ frustration more apparent than their opinions that agencies are out of alignment..."

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:18:56 -0500

“Nowhere is clients’ frustration more apparent than their opinions that agencies are out of alignment with the digital age. Clients are disappointed with agencies’ ability to integrate interactive and traditional advertising. The vast majority of clients feel that agencies are struggling to change their business model and, so far, are playing catch-up with interactive agencies. Clients simply do not see traditional agencies as adjusting well in an era of rapid technological changes.”

- New Study: Clients Lower Expectations Of Agencies - Forbes

Interesting…